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In rural Malawi, it is rumored that sorcerers use special magic charms (mgoneko) to seduce women as they sleep at night. In 2005, fear rose to a high level when secondary school girls began reporting mass attacks. Anxious students asked, “Can girls contract AIDS from these attacks?” Even some older married women sleeping next to their husbands claimed to have been overcome by witches. These Malawian narratives speak to a gendered experience of helplessness and vulnerability, dramatize the media-fed notion of a battle between genders, reference international human rights discourses, and represent a call for action.
Anika Wilson is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in Folklore and Folklife. Her research examines rumor, gossip, urban legends, and advice about gender related conflict and HIV/AIDS with an emphasis on women's experiences and perspectives. Her book Folklore, Gender, and AIDS in Malawi: No Secret Under the Sun is the first on the topic to draw primarily upon such texts and is the recipient of the Elli Kongas-Maranda prize from the American Folklore Society's Women's Section in 2014 for pioneering and superior work in feminist folklore.
